I thought I was fine until I stopped in Cassie’s room. She lasered my face with her sharp adolescent eyes. ‘‘Mom, what happened?’’
‘‘Nothing, honey. There was just this creepy guy in the parking garage who…’’
‘‘Are you okay?’’ I nodded. ‘‘Did you tell Dad?’’ I shook my head.
Cassie pulled the iPod buds from her ears. ‘‘You need tea.’’
Blessed are those who have daughters.
Later, as I hurried past Karl, snug as a bear in his new recliner, he glanced over his copy of Nature. ‘‘Off to your ninjettes class?’’
‘‘Sure am, sweetie,’’ I said. ‘‘Tonight we’re practicing plucking people’s heads off.’’
Karl would have to help Bobby, our fifteen-year-old who often got stuck on geometry, and Cassie, who was struggling with college essays. As both required hands-on assistance, he’d have to leave his chair and go act like a parent.
Communication is my specialty. Five days a week, I visit schools and community groups around the state, helping parents and teenagers learn to communicate more effectively. I’m good at helping people talk to each other. You’d think I could make it happen at home, but Karl’s developed an invisible shield that deflects my words like armor. His conversation these days is mostly demands or complaints, as though as his body gets wider, his mind gets narrower.
They say women tend to marry their fathers. My mother used to roll her eyes at my father’s constant demands and mutter, ‘‘Maybe it would be different if he were Winston Churchill.’’ Sometimes, studying the back of Karl’s magazine, I wondered if Mrs. Churchill was lonely, too.
I probably sound bitter. I’m not. It’s just frustrating to have good communication skills and be such a failure at home. Lately I’ve been feeling desperately fragile. Between Karl, the house, two teenagers, and a job, I’m stretched so far I feel like I’m teetering on a window ledge.
It was good to get out for something besides errands and work. I punched the ON button and got Seeger and Springsteen. The last song I played was a Cher song about Jesse James. The idea of a woman like me sending some arrogant studlet down in flames always left me smiling.
My ‘‘ninjettes class,’’ as Karl called it, was actually a RAD, or Rape Aggression Defense, class offered by our local police department. It was as much common sense and safety precaution as martial arts and self-defense. My friend Katie talked me into it, saying she didn’t want to make an ass of herself alone. But Katie’s a tough lawyer who’s good on her feet and looks like you wouldn’t want to mess with her, so I wondered if she’d done it for me. She always says I should get out more.
It was a sensible step for me. Increasingly, I found myself in far-flung parts of the state crossing scary parking lots at night. When I was standing in a gym with a bunch of nervous suburban ladies, our training had seemed distant and theoretical, but today at the mall, it had been just what I’d needed. Tonight we were practicing everything we’d learned. Police officers in their Aggressor suits were going to mug us and we were going to fight them off.
In the female officers’ locker room, my classmates clustered around Natalie Burke. Natalie was a big-eyed, slender brunette, the kind of woman you think you won’t like because she’s too damned attractive. She had perky implants while we were scooping up our saggy middle-aged breasts and repackaging them with underwire and padding, a sculpted body with visible muscles, and a frightening amount of energy. While we dragged our sorry asses into the gym each week, mumbling our responses like a gaggle of middle schoolers, Natalie hit the floor with singeing intensity.
She wiped away tears and streaks of mascara while two women stroked her back and murmured comfort. As I joined them, Katie whispered, ‘‘Her husband just left her for a twenty-five-year-old.’’
I felt the instinctive anger I always felt at these stories. Karl, still attractive despite the spread, was unlikely ever to leave me. It’s hard to get entangled with young honeys if you spend your life in your lab, your car, and your chair. There were young lab assistants, but anyone expecting half-decent treatment soon left unless they were as obsessed with lipids as Karl was. He looked to be the exception, though. Lately a lot of husbands were trading in their wives for younger models.
I could imagine someone youth-obsessed leaving me. My mind’s nice and tight, but from shoulder to knee I’m soft as the Pillsbury Doughgirl. Natalie, though, was fit and gorgeous. Nor did the timing make sense. They’d just moved into a new house, I knew, because every week she related another construction disaster.
‘‘He just…’’ Natalie’s husky voice quivered. ‘‘… came home one day and said he was moving on. Standing in the kitchen, right in front of the children, he says he’s finally found someone who truly understands him. Who makes him feel young again.’’
She drew a shuddering breath. ‘‘Who wouldn’t feel younger if they didn’t have to worry about homework, sports schedules, teacher conferences, plumbers, investments, and finding a retirement community for his cranky mother?’’
Her workout shoes slapped the dingy tile. ‘‘I’ve been understanding him for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of bullying the cleaner about his shirts. Of running in from T-ball games and showering off baby spit after moving heaven and earth to get a sitter so I could meet him for dinner in Boston looking glamorous. A quarter century of dancing to his damned piper and he dumps me. It’s just not fair.’’
She jerked off her wedding band and threw it across the room. ‘‘Twenty years as a gym fanatic because he noticed every ounce I gained. Well, fuck him.’’
The shiny gold spun like a dancer on the tile, then disappeared between two lockers. The room was so quiet I could hear the small clang of metal on stone as it fell.
Natalie snatched a headband from her bag, tied back her hair, and pushed up her sleeves. ‘‘Those cops better watch out because I am mad as hell and I have got to take it out on somebody.’’
‘‘What’s his name?’’ Katie asked.
‘‘Sterling,’’ she said. ‘‘Can you believe it? His name is Sterling.’’
Infected by her anger, we followed her into the gym, lively for once. And it made a difference. When I shouted ‘‘No!’’ I meant it. When I punched and kicked, it was in earnest. I was thinking about the guy in the garage. How I’d hated it that some creep could get his kicks terrifying me. I got a real rush channeling my fear and anger into positive action, using my breath to keep from getting rattled, focusing my energy into a self-protective response.
I wasn’t alone. The whole class was responding to the idea of men acting badly. When the massive cop in the Aggressor suit approached Natalie, I saw surprise and respect through the bars of his mask as she stomped, kicked, and punched him to the floor.
Then it was my turn. When we started the course, I couldn’t bring myself to shout. I said ‘‘No’’ in such a quiet voice I wouldn’t have deterred a three-year-old. Over the weeks my ‘‘No’’ had stopped sounding like an invitation to try again. Tonight I roared. When Natalie knocked that guy down and stomped the hell out of him, I was on my feet with the rest of the class yelling, ‘‘Yes!’’
It was one thing to cheer the others on, another to face this guy myself. Even if he was limping a little and not showing his earlier gusto, he was nearly twice my size and probably half my age. When I began my nonchalant stroll across the gym, I felt the same clenching fear I’d felt in the parking garage. But nothing happened.
I was almost across the room when a fat, gloved hand snaked around from behind and grabbed me. I jabbed my elbow back, hard, as I seized his hand and spun around, jerking him toward me. I slapped his ear with one hand while snapping a kick toward his crotch. ‘‘Breathe,’’ I whispered, ‘‘breathe.’’